Paul to the Romans, "Their sound
went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the
world." D'Ailly attempts to reason, but he is overawed, and gives
to the world virtually nothing.
Still, the doctrine of the antipodes lived and moved: so much so
that the eminent Spanish theologian Tostatus, even as late as the
age of Columbus, felt called upon to protest against it as
"unsafe." He had shaped the old missile of St. Augustine into the
following syllogism: "The apostles were commanded to go into all
the world and to preach the gospel to every creature; they did not
go to any such part of the world as the antipodes; they did not
preach to any creatures there: _ergo_, no antipodes exist."
The warfare of Columbus the world knows well: how the Bishop of
Ceuta worsted him in Portugal; how sundry wise men of Spain
confronted him with the usual quotations from the Psalms, from St.
Paul, and from St. Augustine; how, even after he was triumphant,
and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of the
earth's sphericity, with which the theory of the antipodes was so
closely connected, the Church by its highest authority solemnly
stumbled and persisted in going astray.
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